Archive for September 2007
He Must Be a Rockstar
It’s hard to tell if famous (or infamous) people are dead or alive. I blame the cinematic age and babyboomers for this. If someone is looking young and vibrant on screen it’s hard to think of them as being dead. How long did people mourn James Dean? It was hard for them to handle so by the time Elvis kicked the bucket babyboomer’s minds just shut down. No, no, no, it can’t be possible they said. Like the second coming of Jesus they started spotting him at truck diners, airports and other odd places. He didn’t even walk on water, feed the multitude or heal the sick. Although he served his country he wasn’t a war hero. All he did copy some moves and riffs from black singers, swivel his hips and come out with a bunch of hokey pop musical movies (which I …. er… love) and he becomes elevated to demigod status. This is all you need to become a hero to the converted these days.
Twenty years later the same ailment inflicts black Gen X-ers. The death was of Tupac and Biggie was a conspiracy. No, it was staged and they are both in hiding only venturing out to some anonymous studio to spit out new releases that they are creating from some bunker in a far off place because they don’t want the fame, just the money. They have after death fame, the one that keeps them in youth forever.
So, to me, its similar to the conundrum of whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead. Just like a Tupac cd, a new bin Laden video comes resurfacing every few years. And now (just like with a Tupac cd) talking heads are trying to decipher it.
“Is this new stuff or old stuff?” “Does he mention anything current?” “Can we figure out where he is?” “His beard is darker. Does that mean this is an old tape?”
And just like with a Tupac cd we get the conspiracy theorists coming out and weighing in on whether it’s someone who looks like him but not really him, its an old remixed video (or audio tape) that is used to inspire insurgents.
Just like we can’t fathom that Elvis, Tupac and Biggie died before we were ready to let them go we can’t understand how bin Laden should be alive after we decided he should be dead. We bombed his cave, we ran him out of Afghanistan so how is he going to stage a comeback when we (the U.S.) don’t really want him. His crawling out of obscurity becomes a reminder of how far we have strayed from the original goal –which was to rid the world of terrorism and those who use him as a leader. We told the world he was dead and then moved onto Iraq the same way we can switch to the next big thing in pop culture. Just like a bad case of herpes he keeps flaming up on the current administration to let them know you might be using Valtrex, but herpes doesn’t really go away. Bin Laden might lay dormant for a while but he comes around every now and again to remind us of our bad one night stand.
For all I know bin Laden could really be somewhere having wine and cheese with Elvis, Biggie and Pac. Maybe they are all in a secluded place or another dimension and only pop in on this world to make their mark and let us know they can still have an effect on us. Or it could be some elaborate scheme created by big media moguls. Those Hollywood people, they can do anything.
RIP Madeleine L’Engle
I don’t know how many times I have read A Wrinkle in Time and the highlight of my childhood is when I wrote her a letter and she wrote me back. Continuing into my teens I read about 10 of her books and she steadily wrote books for children after I long entered into adulthood. Just last week I had mentioned to my daughter my love for L’Engle’s work as a child and she told me she remembered my reading A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet to her when she was young.
So, to be introduced to this remarkable author or to reacquaint yourself with her check out her obit in the NYT and pick up one of her many books.
Should VH1 Be Boycotted?
A few weeks ago media watchblog “What About Our Daughters?” went after cable station BET because of their new show “We Can Do Better” (previously named Hot Ghetto Mess). Activists felt that the show was an affront to African Americans by showcasing the worst of our behavior.
It’s apparent that someone has been clicking around the channels because finally someone caught a clue that for the past few years VH1’s programming has spiraled down into ghettofab territory. Flavor of Love (FOL), I Love New York and Charm School, three of their most popular shows, are known for depicting women (mostly black women) in a bad light. The racy women were often physically confrontational, argumentative, and barely dressed. Flavor of Love has been compared to a modern day minstrel show with the same uncultivated women back to misbehave on Charm School. There have been grumblings but groups haven’t been putting the pressure on the network to change their format or take them to task about the images until now.
It all started a month ago when it was leaked that VH1 passed on a show called Interracial Love. The show would be more in line with ABC’s The Bachelorette show and have professional black women looking beyond race to find true love. The network felt the show wasn’t a good fit with its current programming. An employee with VH1 leaked to the shows creator that the main reason they decided not to go with the show was because the station likes to show black women as being ghetto. Now a boycott has been called (I’m unsure by whom; looks like Black Press Radio is helping to promote it) and they want viewers to refrain from watching the station.
I’ve only seen a few episodes of all three shows and was literally disgusted by the behavior of the women and the men each time I tuned in (and then quickly tuned out). I am saddened by the decision that VH1 had decided to pander to low brow television. But then, we have to admit that it sells. We might not like it, but this is what America wants to see and there is an abundance of black people waiting to give it to them. From our position here in the 21st century we look back in time and feel ashamed of the black performers in yesteryear. We look at Step’n Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, and Bojangles Robinson and wonder how they could take parts as servants, sometimes slack jawed, unintelligent and embarrassing to us now. We don’t see the irony of it now, how what we deemed as acceptable entertainment for black performers might make our elders cringe.
My daughter is one of the ones who don’t get it. She likes to watch those three shows when she finds the time. At first I chastised her for watching it but then decided to take a different approach by using the show to point out aberrant behavior and the correct way for a young black woman to act. Then one night we happened upon the Marx Brothers “A Day at the Races”. She’s a big Marx brother fan and we watched it together peacefully until it got to the Lindy Hop dance routine.
The rolling eyes and large grins offended her. “I don’t like this,” she said. “This is an embarrassment to black people; it’s racist! How can they show this on television now?”
“How can they show I Love New York?” I asked her. “It’s just as embarrassing if not as racist.”
She mumbled at me, saying it wasn’t the same thing but now has stopped watching those shows with as much regularity as she once had.
I wonder what African Americans would watch if we didn’t worry what the majority at large would would think of us. Do we really prefer low brow comedies over something more substantial? Would the majority of us rather watch movies like Soul Plane and How High as opposed to Eve’s Bayou or To Sleep with Anger? One young woman from FOL had been going to schools to talk about her time on the television show. Once upon a time we took networks to task because they showed us as nothing more than prostitutes, pimps and thugs but as soon as we could get a bit of control and tell our own stories through music and videos we cast ourselves as prostitutes, pimps and thugs. Is this truly how we see ourselves?
And is this the only way that white America wants to see us? Will they only throw dollars or give air time or view television shows that only show black people as poor or debase or criminal? Back in the 70s white critics found the Evans family as credible but 10 years later in the 80s thought that the Huxtables were farfetched. A black upper middleclass family where the father is a doctor and the mother is a lawyer, married with five well behaved children? This was not reality they said, forgetting that their most popular program was about a war that lasted three years but the show was on for 10 years.
Boycotting VH1 is a good idea, even if nothing should come of it and they go ahead and create more editions of each show. We have to let the powers that be know that we don’t enjoy watching black folk coon for the almighty dollar and it would be better to see them bag groceries than debase themselves in front of millions of people. African Americans are multifaceted and we can do more in front of the camera than run for the cops or run for a ball. We have stories that stretch outside the hood and even inside the hood there are more of us scrapping and striving than shucking and jiving.
But you ain’t never gonna see that on VH1.
I Know What You Like?
Maybe its me, but are Asian women cooing over beats, “I know what you like” an awful lot this fall?
Okay, its not a lot of Asian women, just two. And that’s two more than was getting airplay and attention last fall.
First it’s Nicole Scherzinger’s new release, “Whatever You Like”. On the hook she keeps repeating, in high rapids succession, “I do whatever you like, I do whatever you like”.
Then its Baby T (aka TTasha aka Eun Mi Rae aka Tasha Reid). At the end of a couple of verses she says, ”I got the gitchy, gitchy ya, Yeah I know what they like”.
So, do they know what we like? Are they playing into the cliched Asian sex kitten role? Is the phrase a cultural touchstone that I’m too old to be aware of? If it is, someone let me know. I’m steeling myself for the onslaught of young women (and young gay men) going around and inserting the phrase “I know what you like” into conversation whenever possible.
Reading Still is Fundamental
Call me your friendly neighborhood pusher. I got the hook up, yo. I got what you need. Even if you think you don’t, I can show you.
“Yo, D? What you read last? You need another? What you like? Sports? Mysteries? Sci-fi? I can get it for you? I can find a book for you; just tell me what you like.”
My daughter is trying to put a stop to it. It embarasses her that I give books as gifts for Christmas, birthdays or just because I think someone would like the message or the story. No one else gives books, so that is my niche. When she was 10 she asked me not to give them out anymore.
“Mom, they don’t even want to read the subtitles in movies so they don’t want to read books,” she said angrily trying to reason with me. “It’s embarassing. Don’t give them out anymore, please.”
To appease her I stopped giving gifts to that side of the family. To me, giving is like giving a part of myself because I totally feel you can lose and find yourself inside a book. Fiction and non fiction can help you realize a part of yourself or help you see things in a while different way. Some feel movies can do the same thing, but its passive where reading is active and sometimes reactive. I can listen to a story and get one thing but if I read the story myself I get it on a whole different level.
But then I am in a shrinking minority. Last month the Associated Press reported a quarter of U.S. adults didn’t read a book in the past year. For those who did read, women read more than men (reading nine books to their five), liberals read more than conservatives and religious books and popular fiction were the subjects most widely read. They didn’t break it down along racial lines but if my friends are any indication Zane and other chic lit would be at the top for black women.
So, if Americans on the whole are reading less, then is there a reason to be upset about the latest offering on BET? Amid the booty shaking, mindless hook videos they are playing a Schoolhouse Rock inspired crunk cartoon that chants “Read a Book”. CNN had a short segment talking to black parents about whether the cartoon was offensive.
I want to know, have these parents watched BET recently? One guy was talking about Teen Summit! That show has been off the air for years. Have they heard what DJs are playing on the radio? Last week a friend of mine told me she had a talk with her 13 year old daughter who was a song that had the term “cock blocking” in the lyrics. She asked her daughter not to sing it and then had to explain to her what the phrase meant. Her daughter, who was mindlessly singing the words, was appalled.
“Why did they put something like that on the radio?!” she cried. My friend told her she didn’t know, but told her to sing the song around her father because she didn’t want her husband going ballistic.
So, I’m sitting here wondering how parents can be up in arms about the mindless chant of a cartoon to go read a book, take care of your kids and use good hygiene. Of all the subliminal messages in today’s music that’s put out under the drone of a driving beat I think those are a couple of good ones. Aside from the profanity I can’t slam the cartoon that much; it makes more sense to me than Soulja Boy’s hit right now (is he speaking English?). But are we really that worried about what the outside world thinks of us? Didn’t that kind of go by the wayside with the Luke Skywalker videos back in the early 90s? Perhaps these parents can petition BET to have better programming on during the afternoon with music videos that don’t look like they were taken from the Playboy channel or maybe have shows that talk about serious issues that concern the community or a show that highlights Black teens making a difference.
Or, better yet these parents can just turn off the TV and have their kids… uh… read a book. What a novel concept!
Make up your own mind about the video.
Pigskin Thursdays
The daily temperature is still averaging 90 degrees but our minds have already turned toward fall. The kids are back in school and we are awaiting the coolness of the weather, the scurrying of squirrels gathering nuts, and the crunching of brightly colored leaves under our feet.
Or maybe it’s the sound of bones.
To my husband J, fall means football. He begins excitedly talking about the next football season at the end of the last football season ; making plans to schedule off for the high holy days of this odd obsession (important dates: Ohio State v Michigan State, Ohio State in any Bowl Game, and the Browns v the Bengals). He tells me if there’s any thing I need to do with him those days I need to tell him early and forewarns me that I better pray that our wedding anniversary doesn’t fall on an important game day because he won’t be doing anything after 12 on those day. As a matter of fact, I should be sitting beside him in full reverence that holidays like those deserve.
“You can make me sandwiches and during commercials you can go get me a beer,” J said earnestly. “But if the team starts losing you have to leave because you’re a jinx.”
I look at him like he just grew another head. “J, go sit down somewhere.”
I have had some surprised looks when I tell people of J’s love for sports, especially football. People naturally assume because he’s Asian his interests should veer more towards classical music, martial arts and perhaps baseball. J loves rock music and football and what he knows about martial art is what he has seen on from the movies. On Sundays, Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas thru New Year’s Day I am a football widow.
His exuberance for the sport has rubbed off on his son. J2 loves to play and it doesn’t matter if the weather is cloudy or sunny, he will be in a pick up game with his friends. Because J2 was able to bring up his grades last year J allowed him to try out for the Jr. High team this year. J2 is now 2nd string on the 8th grade team (which is kind of good but to be expected). I don’t know who is more excited, but I suspect that J may be a bit more excited than J2.
Each day J goes and views the last few minutes of J2’s practice and, each day, he comes back with what he thinks is interesting information.
“Everyone is so excited that he’s playing on the team.”
“All the parents know who J2 is –they’re kids are going home talking about him.”
“J2 doesn’t know the plays. The coach told him to do a couple of things and he did the opposite.”
I must admit, I didn’t get this involved when my daughter took a year away from musical theater to explore her inner jock by playing softball (if anyone remembers my Softball Chronicles from my other blog). I could have done back flips when she returned to theater last year although it nearly drove me insane to raise money to send her over to the Fringe Festival this past summer. The theater is my bliss and the fact that we can have that in common (and, in essence, her living out my dream of being a performer) brings us closer together. I can see it’s the same with J; he’s vicariously living his high school football dreams through J2. J is a big dude now, broad shouldered, thick and near six feet tall but the pictures of him in high school show a skinny, awkward runty dude (can I also mention he feathered his hair?). He played football for a while but sometime in high school he gave the sport up. I asked him why but he would never tell me but that picture kind of explains it all.
Last Thursday was J2’s first game. It was a scrimmage against another small suburban school. My daughter Cricket even decided to unplug herself from her computer and came along. In this family of four I am the only non-sports person unless one can count cheerleading as sport (which it is!). Over the years, from Cricket’s short stints in softball and volleyball I have learned that is very important to bring a book for the long lulls, down times, and bench riding moments. Unfortunately I was rushed out of the house my book was left on the table.
So I was there at the stadium, forced to watch the minute details. The game was supposed to start at 4:15; we arrived at 4:14 and for the first 20 minutes we watched home and visitors practice plays on the field. When it finally did start I missed it because I didn’t know Jr. High doesn’t kick off the way. Because J2 is second string he didn’t come out until about ten minutes into the game, when the other team had the ball. A few times he was able to grab a barreling opponent and the most exciting part of the game for us came when he was able to catch the ball and go a yard or two before getting run out of bounds.
His teammates didn’t fare as well. One player was crushed between two players and sat the remainder of the game on the bench. Another player was slammed and was crumpled on the ground for several minutes until they helped him walk off the field, wincing in pain at each step. He will be out for the rest of the season. From where I sat up in the stands a lot of the boys looked like Atom Ant and I was awed that they could do that much damage. I began to wonder if we really should be letting him play this savage game and how will we handle getting J2 up and down the steps if he should get injured.
But that is no worry to J. It’s a game, he says. It’ll strengthen him, he believes. It makes them feel good to know that there are more Korean Americans like Hines Ward, and brothers William and Marcus Demps are in pro football (yes, I know all three are Blasian, but J wants to claim them as all Korean).
So for now, when I can get away my Thursdays afternoons will be filled with Jr. High football, come rain or shine.
It’s Not Just Us
Sometimes it’s good to step away from the race issues (deep, deep issues) that we have here in the U.S and look at racial problems in other countries. A few years ago we were shaking our heads at the problems England (specifically London) was having with its Asian community. Then a year or so after that when Paris was burning (literally burning) because of the issues it had with 2nd and 3rd generation of citizens of African descent. So we take a break from our issues between black and white, occupational Americans vs. Latino immigrants, black vs. Latinos, straights vs. gays (choose your issue) and we look overseas to see how others are handling it or what they are going through and feel a bit of comfort to realize that we aren’t the only ones.
So now we can look at Brazil, the country that claims to not know color. Brazil touts itself as being colorblind although it could see color well enough to make a pyramid of darker hued people on the bottom and lighter skinned folks on the top. Recent articles have highlighted racial problems in the country and tonight on PBS’s Wide Angle they take a deeper look with the documentary film “Am I Black or White?”
Check your local listings for showtimes and go to PBS’s interactive sight to learn more about the subject go behind the scenes with Adam Stepan or take a quiz to see how well you know race relations in Brazil
Then next week I guess its back to immigration and affirmative action.
Some Folks Really Need Labor Day Off
I love the radio show This American Life (TAL). You don’t realize how powerful words are until you are under the spell of a great storyteller, which is what the show is all about. The stories the people tell are oral documentaries or verbal essays about what’s going on, how they feel or what things are like in someone’s small corner of the country. When Ira Glass came to the city my daughter and I went to see him; I wanted to see him because I love his show, my daughter wanted to go because she is crazy crushing on Ira Glass (Geek Love, completely).
When I heard that Showtime was picking the radio show up to do something visual I ws nonplussed. Since I don’t have Showtime I completely missed the first season, but luckily some posted one of the stories on youtube.
I don’t know if I could go to a business and cuss out the wait staff even if I am encouraged to do it. Alcohol is like a truth serum for some; it suppresses inhibitions and lets people feel loose and free. I am sure that the people participating in the bacchanal of bad words believe they are just having harmless fun, even when they invoke racial slurs. Who does it hurt? The tips are good and the wait staff participates in the flying expletives. Besides, they may never use the racial epithets in any other situation.
Well, maybe and maybe not. It’s hard for me to believe that it’s the lubrication of alcohol that lets the expletives and epithets slip so easily into their lingo. Or that it’s just a case as when in Rome, do as the Romans do. I suspect the people who have easily succumbed to the environment either use the words a few times a week while with their friends or in private with their families. It should also be noted that the hot dog stand is situated in an all white neighborhood in Chicago.
Even though this story was on video I didn’t really need to view it to see it. That’s the power in the stories on TAL. During the short seven minutes I turned my head and just from listening to it I could visualize the ambivalence of the workers, the craziness of their customers and be in wonderment. But the scenes that I did see, like the people doing a strange ritualistic dance, jumping up and down and banging on the windows requesting a chocolate shake just leaves me wishing I had not seen the story.
We have a long way to go in race relations.
Black is Black Until There’s Green
I’m almost finished with Stephen L Carter’s, “New England White”. I love this book. It highlights the black elite and touches upon the rarely talked about issue that upper class African America doesn’t necessarily feel connected to those not in their realm.
The plot is propelled by Julia Carlyle, the well-to-do wife of a President of an unnamed New England Ivy League college. The story opens with Julia and her husband Lemaster finding the mauled body of her ex-boyfriend during an early New England snowstorm. Her dead ex, Kellen Zant, is also award winning economist and professor at the same university where the Carlyles work. As she sets off to solve Kellen’s murder we are taken into a world that is rarely seen or talked about: the affluent side of African Americans.
It can rival anything seen on the OC or Dallas. With all the twists and turns we learn about the secret lives of the Black upper class: the Ladybugs (whose real world doppelganger might be The Links), the reticent Empyreals, and how the lives of the Black rich often shadow those of their White counterparts. They, too, don’t want to travel to the rough side of town or feel a strong affinity to Blacks who don’t move in their circles. There are scenes where Carter is brutally blunt about the rift between these two Black Americas, pointing the finger at both factions of black people while different characters oft times repeat how America won’t give help to its black brethren, although the haves of black America won’t give to it’s same brothers with less.
The bromide that Black is Black is drummed into every brown skinned child at an early age. White America sees all of us as (n-words), we say, and we are veritably all in the same boat. Perhaps we are, but some are riding in the leaking hull trying to keep their heads above water while others are on the topside of the luxury mainliner eating caviar and playing shuffleboard. We are separate and unequal, divided by privilege, money and sometimes color.
Eight years ago Lawrence Otis Graham wrote the history of the black upper crust in his book “Our Kind of People”. In it he discusses his life among the Grand Families of the black community and is open about his nose job and insecurity in not having the brightest skin and straight hair. In a review for Salon Magazine, Karen Grigsby Bates quotes a Detroit socialite from the book as saying, “”Why would I be socializing with some caseworker or mailman who goes to NAACP events? I’d have about as much in common with them as a rich white person has with his gardener.”
I often think the only ones who don’t realize this rift in the Black social classes are those who would benefit the most if they would only wise up. Recently the focus has been on how middle class America has been voting against her best interests by voting for the Republicans. Well, African Americans have long been voting (and sometimes not voting) against their own interests by tightly holding onto a political party that takes them for granted while allowing the other party to overlook them completely. Who is looking out for the poor people of Black America? Many want to take to task Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby as if they are elected officials instead of their own state congressmen, senators or, even on a micro level, their mayors and city councilmen.
In her essay “Racist Like Me” author and columnist Debra Dickerson argues for a class warfare to replace racial warfare.
“A world of perfect harmony would be lovely,” Dickerson writes. “But until the rapture comes I’d rather blue-collar types of all races faced off against us “suits” than one race against the other. There is nothing logical, natural, or beneficial about a world organized by race-the very concept is irrational. Any system divided along racial lines, implicitly or overtly, will be immoral, inefficient, and unstable.”
It’s exactly the conundrum that Julia Carlyle encounters as she follows the clues left behind by Kellen and comes face to face with her a side of her community she often ignores. If a black person from a disenfranchised community were to meet Julia’s duplicate in the real world, they more than likely would only see another sister in high priced clothes and but not high cost that is paid by both of them.
